Log In to Google's Fantastic Future

When the company truly grows up, maybe 10 years from now, purely online sales will play but a small part in Big G's business plan.

Armed with a big sack full of information about logged-in users and their browsing habits, Google is positioning itself to become the MOAMP (mother of all marketing platforms). Many digital set-top boxes already have an Internet connection -- Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) FiOS, for example, runs its entire television signal over high-speed 'net connections. Second-generation Blu-ray players can do the same, so thanks for those network-friendly specs, Sony (NYSE: SNE). TV sets from Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) and others are starting to show up with similar features.

The end result See what all of this adds up to? In the very near future, fully networked televisions will likely become the standard.